The present invention relates to a safety device for taps provided with a disk shutter sliding in a tubular sector shaped like the arc of a circle, constituting the product outlet duct of pasteurizing machines used in the production of creams, soups or the like.
In such known taps the shutter disk is connected by means of a curved bar with an operating lever endowed with a spring pin fitting into suitable hollows formed on an element with circular sector which is concentric with respect to the rotation axis of said operating lever.
Such pin can be lifted from said hollows by exerting onto it a traction in an axial direction with respect to the operating lever, then the operating lever can be freely rotated around its hinging axis, thus allowing the shutter disk to slide within the aforesaid tubular sector from a position in which it fully closes up the tubular sector, thus avoiding the product discharge, to an intermediate position in which a radial outlet for the discharge of liquid products builds up, and further to a position in which it is completely taken out of the outlet tubular sector, thus enabling the discharge of dense products such as creams.
The problem related to these known taps consists in that, when the operating lever of the tap shutter is rotated with the operating handle of the stopping pin being pulled, there is no means allowing the operating lever to stop its stroke on the radial hole for product extraction (said hole being oriented downwards), so that it can always occur that the operator, being inexperienced or simply careless, turns the operating lever pulling the shutter too much until the latter gets out of the outlet tubular sector, thus freeing the end outlet (which is oriented towards the operator) and risking serious consequences for the operator who could be struck by a gush of hot liquid.
Therefore, the main aim of the present invention is to provide a safety device associated with said operating operating lever, which should avoid that, due to an incorrect operation, the tap shutter is fully taken out from the tubular duct within which it slides.
According to the main characteristic of the present invention said object is obtained by providing, both on the operating lever and in the element with tubular sector containing the hollows defining the basic positions of the shutter operating lever, abutment means suitable to stop the movement of the operating lever in correspondence of said intermediate opening position of the radial outlet for product discharge, thus avoiding the unintentional overcoming of such position.